Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

"Frank Stella is one of my heroes. De Kooning as well. And [Robert] Rauschenberg too, and he even worked with glass. I’ll always remember when I first saw his work in 1958 when I was in Venice for the Biennale. I saw them again in Stockholm—the work with the goat in the middle of the tire, his Combine work. These pieces moved me so much. I said, my God, where is art going? Look at how much possibility there is! But for me inspiration always comes from Iran, from my history, from my childhood, for better or for worse. I always go with the feeling of my eyes, and with my heart, and that is my main inspiration."Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, excerpted from her conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist in Cosmic Geometry.

Born in 1924 in the ancient Persian city of Qazvin, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian spent her childhood in a grand old house replete with stained glass, wall paintings and nightingales. Coming of age during World War II, she left occupied Iran and audaciously set out for New York, where she was quickly absorbed into the city's thriving avant garde. In the decades to follow, during successive exiles in Tehran and New York, Farmanfarmaian developed an intuitive yet painstakingly crafted artistic practice in mirror mosaic and reverse-painted glass that weds the cosmic patterning of her Iranian heritage with the rhythms of modern Western geometric abstraction. This book is the first substantial survey of Farmanfarmaian's acclaimed geometric works, and features an in-depth interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist; critical essays by Nader Ardalan, Media Farzin and Eleanor Sims; warm tributes by Farmanfarmaian's friends Etel Adnan, Siah Armajani, caraballo-farman, Golnaz Fathi, Hadi Hazavei, Susan Hefuna, Aziz Isham, Rose Issa, Faryar Javaherian, Abbas Kiarostami, Shirin Neshat, Donna Stein and Frank Stella; an excerpt from The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture by Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar (1973); and an annotated timeline of Farmanfarmaian's life by Negar Azimi."A role model for the artist of the twenty-first century." -Hans Ulrich Obrist